A 2019 video of actor Prakash Raj is circulated in social media with false claims.
Interestingly, the award winning actor had tweeted yesterday asking people of Karnataka to bring down the BJP rule in the state.
Claim
Dear Kannadigas,
Don’t Waste your Vote on CONgress.
Don’t trust the Dirty Politics of CONgress
– #justasking Prakash Raj.
Rating
Explanation
Karnataka Legislative Assembly Elections are supposed to be held tomorrow (10th May 2023). The fierce election campaigns have come to a halt, as per the Election Commission’s guidelines. But social media users continue to garner support for their respective political parties. A video of actor Prakash Raj is being circulated on social media with claims that the actor was asking voters to not waste their vote by voting Congress. This is being shared by many supporters of the BJP, the party in currently power in power in the state, which is fighting to retain power. Some of the posts can be seen here, here and here.
Even this villain #PrakashRaj doesn’t want to be in #Congress
If a below belt , hate monger, and a sub standard person like #PrakashRaj calls Congress low level then imagine how low has congress fallen. 🤣🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/a8vp5hSX9W— Himanshu Jain (@HemanNamo) May 5, 2023
What’s the truth?
When we did a keyword search, we were able to find out that the video is originally from April 2019 during India’s General Elections (parliament elections). Actor Prakash Raj had posted the video in response to some claims that were circulating at that time that he was supporting the Congress party and its candidate Rizwan Arshad.
In the video, Prakash Raj alleges that a photo of him, with Congress candidate Rizwan Arshad, taken from the candidates’ meeting was used to falsely claim that he was supporting the Congress party in the Bengaluru Central constituency when in fact, Prakash Raj himself was contesting in the same constituency, against both Congress and BJP candidates. However, the actor lost in a spectacular margin.
FAKE NEWS by CONGRESS.. look at the dirty politics of this party. SHAME ON CONGRESS.. HAVE SENT THE COMPLAINT TO ELECTION COMMISSION WITH PROOF ..please spread and share to counter DIRTY POLITICS pic.twitter.com/4hjAibE2vg
— Prakash Raj (@prakashraaj) April 17, 2019
This video from 2019 is being cut and shared with false claims that the video is somehow related to the current Karnataka Legislative Assembly elections. It is interesting to note that he pleaded the voters to bring down the BJP in Karnataka yesterday (May 8th 2023).
Its my request… Bring down #BJP4Karnataka .. ensure THE END of this jokers .. 🙏🏿🙏🏿🙏🏿 #ಬಿಜೆಪಿ_ಮುಕ್ತ_ಕರ್ನಾಟಕ ವನ್ನು ನಿಜವಾಗಿಸಿ .. ಈ ವಿದೂಶಕರನ್ನು ಮುಗಿಸಿ ..ಕರ್ನಾಟಕವನ್ನು ಕಾಪಾಡಿ 🙏🏿🙏🏿🙏🏿 #justasking #KarnatakaAssemblyElections2023
— Prakash Raj (@prakashraaj) May 8, 2023
Conclusion
In our search, we found that the viral claims that Prakash Raj had asked voters of Karnataka to not vote for the Congress party is misleading. The appeal was made in 2019 during parliament elections which is clipped and shared now.
